Feeding Station

 An old Native American story tells of a young boy who wakes from a scary dream and runs crying to his grandfather. ‘Grandpa, in my dream there was a black wolf fighting with a white wolf. Which one will win?’. Grandpa soothes the child and says – ‘The one you feed’.

Down the road from where I live is a dog, who for years has barked at me when approaching the house on the footpath. Many times I was startled and almost fell over. The neighbours explained that their dog was rescued from a pound and that he had been abused by his previous owner. Over the years the dog has become less scary – especially after a haircut which halves his size. Four months ago the old dog was joined by a Rottweiler pup of about three weeks and the owner told me her name. Every time I would pass the house I would call to the pup who came running to greet me with licks while jumping excitedly at the gate. The pup has now grown into a fearsome animal but she still greets me with love when I stop to say hello. All cultures respond to friendship cultivated over many years. Animals have pure souls devoid of treachery.

Our society has always been calm, respectful and supportive. Even during ‘The Troubles’ common Irish folk shared a cohesive spirit and would look out for one another. That’s changing and sadly it’s by design. Where once we always greeted fellow travellers with a remark about the weather, a joke or even a nod of the head – anything to acknowledge their existence; young people nowadays are most often found with their faces buried in a mobile phone, oblivious to the world around them.

This inevitably leads to a fragmentation as the population becomes hooked on social media gossip, ‘Likes’ and Tik Tok videos. Heaven protect us from dancing medics! Just as our food has become deficient in nutrients and our immune systems weakened, social discourse has become deficient  and our cohesion weakened. We have become more insular. Next introduce new stressors, like a gene altering bioweapon, many new mouths to feed, preferential treatment of foreigners, gradual poisoning of our water supplies, disrupted growing seasons, disrupted supply chains and carefully crafted propaganda telling us what to think and who to blame. ‘Othering’ is becoming a national sport.

So it’s now clear that regular folk are under attack – spiritually, mentally and physically. There are obvious culprits and figures to loathe but while there’s no ‘kinetic element’ in the British Isles most people are happy to continue drinking the Koolaid – taking the next booster jab for a non-existent virus.

Circumstances are set for rapid change. In a few short months we could experience a massive rise in cost of food due to a very dry spring, a new ‘pandemic’ and a freshly empowered WHO dictating responses such as digital IDs, facemasks and restricted travel. It’s as though ‘covid-1’ was just an experiment to see how easily people would comply to the ridiculous.

A clear and present danger is the prevention of access to food and groceries for those unwilling to enter the cage willingly. What a shame that the cultural jewel of Ireland is being destroyed in a training ground adaptation for global psychopaths. Our national psyche remembers the famine of the 1840s and the treachery of those who made it happen. But the strongest longing of mankind is for peace and Ireland will make a heroic comeback. If we are facing feeding stations again in the 21^st century may they be sources of good nutrition, brilliant new technologies, intergenerational love and the best of craic!

My Vampire Bad

 

Folklore has developed fairy tales that on closer inspection provide strong warnings for people of all ages from the Grimm brother’s ‘Hansel and Gretel’ to ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’. It seems that now, in 2025, all of these tales are relevant at once. The Friday night Hammer Horror fest seemed innocent enough in that the movies provided courting couples opportunity to ‘support’ each other. When the Dracula myth got retold as ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, it was intended to return to the original intention of the Irish author. But it is only now that the penny has dropped for me at the psychological interpretation of this truly chilling story.

A central property of a Vampire is that they do not create a reflection in the mirror. This is the idea that the reflection is a psychological construction and that evil cannot be seen. An individual is unaware of the evil that has captured him. In that sense it is a story of everyman.

Another chilling memory of that movie is when the vampire figure cuts his own tongue with a cut-throat razor in order to savour the taste of blood. He smiles to convey his satisfaction and perhaps he is also aware that his now forked tongue allows him to deceive like the serpent of old.

Vampire movies invariably tell of the seduction of a beautiful maiden and the attempts of an ardent young suitor to save her from the dirty old man. The vampire’s desire is to add to his harem of lost souls that over eternity retain the appearance of eternal youth. Over time they become totally captured by evil such that they know no other way of life. Indeed, they know only death. They have so resisted the inevitable wrinkles of age that they have sold their soul for the empty promises that usually belong to Nivea potions. They refuse to grow up.

So how does this apply to me? No, I’m not about to confess that I’m a dirty old man; I refuse to see that possibility in the mirror. Nor am I about to slice into my own tongue that I can more easily lie and deceive to grow a harem of conquests. I have enough of a challenge to live my life fully in the present moment and to bring out the best in others. I cannot however deny that like every other man with a pulse I am attracted to beautiful women and the attraction may persist until my coffin lid is nailed down.

So, since temptation is as natural as life itself, let me be first to step into the sunshine. It has always been both an essential component of physical recovery and the purest means of disinfecting against evil; light overcomes darkness. It will help me to be as transparent as possible ‘this side of the sod’. But to put the mind of any beauty to rest, I will not be going to bed with a string of garlic cloves around my neck.

A Dogs Dinner

 

My Dad was no cook. On those occasions when my Mum was away he would make our dinner – starters of Campbells Cream of Mushroom Soup, main course of beans on toast and a Milky Bar for dessert. Looking back, tasks in our house were divided along very sexist lines, which would be frowned on today. Waiting for Mum to come home was like counting big sleeps to Christmas.

During ‘The Troubles’ Dad bought a boxer pup he called Tuzo. It was lost on us that Tuzo was the name of the British Army General in charge of security in Northern Ireland at the time. Tuzo also hated that Mum was away. When our wasted soup found its way into Tuzo’s bowl he too lost his appetite. We were blamed for showing him a bad example. When he was big enough he got treated to ‘Juicy Meaty Chunks’ and for a while he gobbled up all he could see. But even animals appreciate a balanced diet and before long his Juicy Meaty Chunks got left too.

In the 70s my siblings started committing matrimony and before long it was my turn. I relished my new diet of Juicy Meaty Chunks but soon enough I struggled to clean my bowl and it got taken away. I went hungry. I blame Tuzo for showing me a bad example.

Now in 2025 the world is still largely ignorant of the importance of nutrition and we’re bombarded with an array of challenging issues that defy resolution – from Washington to the Ukraine, from Gaza to Yemen etc. The diet is certainly varied but as a species we’re struggling to clean our bowl.  It’s as though our choices are now too varied. We’re treated to wars, poisoned food, water and air, famine, pharma, transgender mutations, uncontrolled immigration, net-zero nonsense with their useless windmills and solar panels and all budgetary controls out the window.

Running this circus we have a range of superheroes and elites (villains), who play musical chairs to distract us from their agenda of destruction. Pied Piper figures have us marching to unholy drums, believing that they can master the art of the deal or bomb the baddies into submission. It’s ‘Ordo Ab Chao’ and we’re not supposed to notice. For years we’ve been building our own cage as we usher in a Technocratic future dominated by AI. Perhaps we can create a computer clever enough to solve our problems? That implies that God’s design wasn’t good enough, which is bollocks of course.

So what’s to be done? A good first step would be to find stillness. When you want out of a hole you don’t dig it any deeper.  Constant frenetic activity is the way of the world but it’s a huge distraction from the present moment. Let’s do the sensible thing and pause while we weigh up the merits of Campbells Mushroom Soup Vs Juicy Meaty Chunks. Perhaps Dad wasn’t such a bad cook after all.